VI 



of knowledge? But we cannot suppose that the 

 different sciences had their beginning when society 

 was organized as it is at present: when from the 

 social division of labour, and the state of civiliza- 

 tion, there are many to whom the conveniences of 

 life are measured without toil, and who can follow 

 their inclination in the pursuit of knowledge; and 

 when it becomes the lot of others to exercise their 

 minds only for a means of subsistence. For the 

 arts and sciences seem, in a measure, necessary to 

 social improvement, and appear to have arisen, from 

 time to time, out of the wants of individuals, and to 

 have kept pace with civilization. 



In the infancy of society, it is probable that men, 

 then only the wild inhabitants of forests and woods, 

 employed themselves to discover and procure the 

 various subjects of their immediate wants ; and 

 natural history was confined to a knowledge of such 

 animals as were fit for rfood, and to be procured 

 by hunting and fishing; and such as were formi- 

 dable, and to be known, that they might be avoided ; 

 or to whose superior strength human ingenuity and 

 contrivance were to be opposed. But even in a 

 more cultivated state of society, among the eastern 

 nations of shepherds, wlio lived wandering through 

 verdant pastures with their flocks, to dwell whe> 



